This invention relates generally to remote traffic data analysis and more particularly to a system and method for analyzing remote traffic data in a distributed computing environment.
The worldwide web (hereinafter "web") is rapidly becoming one of the most important publishing mediums today. The reason is simple: web servers interconnected via the Internet provide access to a potentially worldwide audience with a minimal investment in time and resources in building a web site. The web server makes available for retrieval and posting a wide range of media in a variety of formats, including audio, video and traditional text and graphics. And the ease of creating a web site makes reaching this worldwide audience a reality for all types of users, from corporations, to startup companies, to organizations and individuals.
Unlike other forms of media, a web site is interactive and the web server can passively gather access information about each user by observing and logging the traffic data packets exchanged between the web server and the user. Important facts about the users can be determined directly or inferentially by analyzing the traffic data and the context of then "hit." Moreover, traffic data collected over a period of time can yield statistical information, such as the number of users visiting the site each day, what countries, states or cities the users connect from, and the most active day or hour of the week. Such statistical information is useful in tailoring marketing or managerial strategies to better match the apparent needs of the audience.
To optimize use of this statistical information, web server traffic analysis must be timely. However, it is not unusual for a web server to process thousands of users daily. The resulting access information recorded by the web server amounts to megabytes of traffic data. Some web servers generate gigabytes of daily traffic data. Analyzing the traffic data for even a single day to identify trends or generate statistics is computationally intensive and time-consuming. Moreover, the processing time needed to analyze the traffic data for several days, weeks or months increases linearly as the time frame of interest increases.
The problem of performing efficient and timely traffic analysis is not unique to web servers. Rather, traffic data analysis is possible whenever traffic data is observable and can be recorded in a uniform manner, such as in a distributed database, client-server system or other remote access environment.
One prior art web server traffic analysis tool is described in "WebTrends Installation and User Guide," version 2.2, October 1996, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. WebTrends is a trademark of e.g. Software, Portland, Oreg. However, this prior art analysis tool cannot perform ad hoc queries using a log-based archival of analysis summaries for efficient performance.
Other prior art web server traffic analysis tools are generally effective in handling modest volumes of server traffic data when operating on a small scale server or non-mainframe solution. Examples of these analysis tools include Market Focus licensed by Interse Corporation, Hit List licensed by MarketWave and Net.Analysis licensed by Net.Genisys. However, these analysis tools require increasingly expensive and complex hardware systems to handle higher traffic data volumes. The latter approach is impracticable for the majority of web server operators. Moreover, these prior art analysis tools are also incapable of rapidly generating trend and statistical information on an ad hoc basis.
Therefore, there is a need for a system and method to efficiently process the voluminous amounts of access information generated by web servers in a timely, expedient manner without the attendant costs associated with large scale hardware requirements. Preferably, such a system and method could perform ad hoc queries of analysis summaries in a timely and accurate manner.
There is a further need for a system and method for efficiently analyzing traffic data reflecting access information on a web server operating in a distributed computing environment. Preferably, such a system and method would process traffic data presented from a variety of sources.
There is still a further need for a system and method for analyzing traffic data consisting of access information for predefined time slices.